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Homeward

 

1.

 

I wish to bear the fruit
I’m here to bear.

 

2.

 

Last month I packed the cart
with nets and books;
with dolls and drowsy children—
tangled, heaped.
With our faces

fronting the wind,
he moved us ten knots due south
to one more port town tucked

between the brackish, muted cove
and its grey, serrated cliff—

that land
at the throat of the God of Men. 

 

3.

 

I envied the trees
as they passed our jostle cart.

Every kind was rooted, and suckling
the water
He sowed beneath the soil.

He made them
born at home. 

 

4.

 

Our old shack,
our almost hollowed tree—

had been my first dry bed
and bare feet
at raw dawn.  Its one window framed
a certain patch of sea—

that province of
my reckless reformation
by desire

to ripen.

 

(originally published as “Fishwife Glancing Homeward” in City Lines Magazine in Spring 2009)

The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then

~Roger McGough